Edgerunners was gaining traction whether people realized it or not.
The worldbuilding alone was reason enough: a sci-fi premise this unconventional, with this much layered meaning, drawn by someone with genuine artistic mastery, wasn't going to stay quiet. The cyberpunk concept appearing for the first time in this world gave it something no other manga had. The visuals delivered on the premise. The readership was building steadily.
The previous chapters had been accumulating fans chapter by chapter. But this time, with the sudden death and the sheer absurdity of it, the audience was polarized hard and fast.
And in the process, it had done something the slow build hadn't: it had people talking.
{SwordMasterMage: "This plot makes no sense. Did the author just run out of ideas?"}
{CloseRangeMage: "Aoyama's a new creator, right? Maybe that's it; no inspiration, so he forced something dramatic."}
{ForceKing: "That's wild though. Author runs dry so they just kill someone?"}
{SomeonesClearlyMad: "Halfway through a chapter and no idea what to write, so... bam, random vagrant kills a crew member, fight scene, done?"}
...
Shuu Fumiya frowned at his screen.
He wasn't ready to accept that explanation. Not from whoever had drawn this.
The first half of chapter 14 was too carefully constructed to be written by someone running on empty. The warmth of it, the deliberate atmosphere, David and Lucy's growing closeness, the male bond with Maine settling into something real, all of it was paced and intentional. The author could have kept running that thread for several more chapters without running out of material. Kiwi had barely been touched, Dorio even less, and the driver Falco hadn't had a single real scene.
So it wasn't a dead end. It was a choice.
Shuu was sitting with that when something clicked.
He'd heard someone in the chat mention it in passing about Night City's cruelty and David's first kill, and his thoughts snapped into alignment.
He typed:
{EngineerBro: "This isn't Aoyama out of ideas. I think I understand what he was doing."}
{ForceKing: "Doing? What was he doing?"}
{OldManShuDao: "I can't see any intentionality here. It came out of nowhere."}
{CloseRangeMage: "Don't overthink it: new creator, empty page, forced drama. End of story."}
{EngineerBro: "Pilar dying wasn't random. The whole point of Night City, as the author has said himself, is that danger is constant and invisible. No warning. No logic. Anyone can die from anything at any time."}
{EngineerBro: "The death of David's mother, Gloria, served a narrative function: it showed Night City's brutality, gave David the Sandevistan, and set the whole chain of events moving. Pilar's death works the same way."}
{EngineerBro: "But more than that, this is David's first kill. He's been building strength, running jobs, getting comfortable. Now something real happened. A teammate is gone because of one moment of bad luck. And David had to take a life to stop it from getting worse."}
{EngineerBro: "Night City isn't the relatively safe place it looked like for the past several chapters. It never was. Aoyama's reminding everyone of that."}
The group went quiet for a moment.
Then they started processing it aloud.
{ForceKing: "When you put it that way..."}
{BlackholeGravity: "That does track actually."}
{OldManShuDao: "I follow the logic now."}
{SomeonesClearlyMad: "Okay but I couldn't have pulled that out on my own. This guy just writes weird."}
{BunnyBunnySqueak: "SAMEEEEE"}
{GalaxySoldier: "Same."}
{SomeonesClearlyMad: "Same."}
{NetromancerBeetrayed: "Same."}
{ForceKing: "SAME."}
...
The group spent the next few minutes demonstrating that people are just fundamentally incapable of stopping once they start agreeing on something.
{NetromancerBeetrayed: "EngineerBro, your interpretation makes sense. Still think the author has something wrong with his head though."}
Shuu looked at his screen.
Yeah. He couldn't actually argue with that part.
Even understanding the intent, even seeing the logic, it was still bizarre. Pilar's death had no setup, served no personal arc, had no connection to any existing antagonist. The cyber-psycho wasn't anyone's nemesis. He was just a malfunctioning stranger who happened to be standing on a container when a crew member decided to pick a fight.
The point was that Night City would kill you for no reason. And Aoyama had made that point by doing exactly the thing the point described.
It was sound reasoning. Executed in the most unsettling way possible.
He honestly could've built out three more chapters of easy team bonding and nobody would have complained. But he hadn't. He'd done this instead.
At least they didn't actually live in Night City.
Shuu put down the magazine and considered the author of Edgerunners for a moment.
Genuinely unhinged, he concluded. Talented, but unhinged.
[Translated and Rewritten by Shika_Kagura]